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Half an original interpretation of Heidegger's early work and half an attempt to buttress the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with a more philosophically rigorous grounding, Science as Social Existence will be of interest not only to Heidegger scholars but to anyone engaged in science and technology studies[...]This is an informative and original book. Kochan should be praised for his clear, pleasant-to-read prose.

— M. Butler, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley for CHOICE

I cannot in the space of this review do justice to the richness and range of Kochan's discussion[...]There is a great deal in this foundational portion of Kochan's discussion that I find tremendously interesting and engaging[...]

David R. Cerbone, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, available online 16 Nov 2018

In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger’s early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing.

By combining Heidegger with SSK, Kochan argues, we can explicate, elaborate, and empirically ground Heidegger’s philosophy of science in a way that makes it more accessible and useful for social scientists and historians of science. Likewise, incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology into SSK renders SKK a more robust and attractive methodology for use by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Kochan’s ground-breaking reinterpretation of Heidegger also enables STS scholars to sustain a principled analytical focus on scientific subjectivity, without running afoul of the orthodox subject-object distinction they often reject.

Science as Social Existence is the first book of its kind, unfurling its argument through a range of topics relevant to contemporary STS research. These include the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific practice, as well as the methods of explanation appropriate to social scientific and historical studies of science. Science as Social Existence puts concentrated emphasis on the compatibility of Heidegger’s existential conception of science with the historical sociology of scientific knowledge, pursuing this combination at both macro- and micro-historical levels.

Beautifully written and accessible, Science as Social Existence puts new and powerful tools into the hands of sociologists and historians of science, cultural theorists of science, Heidegger scholars, and pluralist philosophers of science.

Science as Social Existence: Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Jeff Kochan | December 2017

Chapter One The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Phenomenology,and the Problem of the External World
1. Introduction
2. Scepticism and SSK
3. SSK and External-World Realism
4. Phenomenology and the ‘Natural Attitude’
5. The Phenomenology of Subjectivity in Heidegger’s Being and Time
6. Heidegger’s Response to External-World Scepticism
7. A Heideggerian Critique of SSK’s Response to External-World Scepticism
8. Conclusion

Chapter Three
Finitude, Humility, and the Bloor-Latour Debate
1. Introduction
2. Kantian Humility and the Thing-in-Itself
3. Latour’s Attack on Social Constructivism
4. Bloor’s Defence of Social Constructivism
5. Where the Dust Settles in the Debate
6. Heidegger and the Thing-in-Itself
7. Putting the Bloor-Latour Debate to Rest
8. The Humility of Science Studies
9. Conclusion

Chapter Four Things, Thinking, and the Social Foundations of Logic
1. Introduction
2. Heidegger on the Unity of Things and Thinking
3. Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Plato
4. Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Aristotle
5. Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Descartes
6. Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Kant
7. ‘The Argument Lives and Feeds on Something’
8. Time and Tradition at the Existential Root of Logic
9. From the Phenomenology of Thinking to the Sociology of Knowledge
10. The Social Foundations of Logic
11. Conclusion

Chapter Five Mathēsis and the Emergence of Early-Modern Science
1. Introduction
2. Modern Science as Mathēsis
3. Renaissance Regressus and the Logic of Discovery
4. From Renaissance Regressus to Early-Modern Mathēsis
5. Mathematics and Metaphysics at the Cusp of the Early-Modern Period
6. Nature, Art, and Final Causes in Early-Modern Natural Philosophy
7. Conclusion

Chapter Six Mathematics, Experiment, and the Ends of Scientific Practice
1. Introduction
2. The Galilean First Thing and the Aims of Experiment
3. Releasing Experimental Things
4. Boyle versus Line: A Study in Experimental Fact-Making
5. Social Imagery and Early-Modern Science
6. Conclusion

Chapter Seven Conclusion: Subjects, Systems, and Other Unfinished Business
Appendix

Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index

Jeff Kochan has a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge, and has lectured at the Universities of Alberta and Freiburg. He is currently an Associated Fellow at the interdisciplinary Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:

Jeff Kochan, Science as Social Existence: Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0129